What's a brace?

Ok, stupid American time.

What precisely is a brace? I'd always assumed that if you scored the equalising goal that led to a draw, that's a brace (ala Demps v the scum). Reading the writeup of the Spurs-Wigan match Pavlyuchenko is credited with a brace. Spurs won the match 3-1 and he scored the first and third goals for Spurs, and the first and fourth goal of the match. So is it the equalising goal regardless of outcome? Or is it scoring the opening and closing goals either for your team, or in the entire match? Or is it as Wiki says, simply scoring 2 goals in a match?

Sorry if this has been covered elsewhere.

 

anyone know the origins of why it is called a brace

 

Don, thanks for the origins of the term. I didn't find that anywhere when I googled it earlier.

I had initially thought of brace, as in bracing the ends of something for support, thus 1st and last goals or the goal that draws a match (bracing one end). That's what logic will get you.

So since we've established you're superiority to google on English football, what's does nap hand stem from?

 

Turns out it's derived from the game Napolean. Apparantly you call tricks like spades and calling then taking all five is a nap hand.

 

AG, take a look at this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nap_hand

Seems the likely origin is a card game called Napoleon

and this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hat-trick

discusses all kinds of terms from different games including a brace but no origin of it, we have our own Wiki on FUSA called hatterdon

 

Contrary to what that article says, I've heard four goals called a "Texas hat trick".

 

Four strikeouts in a baseball game = golden sombrero.

So, what the heck: Four goals = golden sombrero.